7 Comments:

Thank God someone hates Meryl Streep here nearly as much as I do. I love the woman, but Mamma Mia! is too damn much. Everyone talks about how "fun" she is and how she's letting loose, but I can't accept it. It simply depresses me to think of her screeching like a baboon when she meets Baranski and Walters at the dock or "dancing" around during that f-ed up "Dancing Queen" number. Hopefully Doubt will erase all these traumatic moments from my brain.

I'm also glad that you're as harsh as you are on this film. I keep hearing, "The ABBA music is wonderful!" but their songs can't make the whole damn movie. It's need something like, I don't know, a plot to keep things moving.

I had almost forgotten about that "You should go to art school" moment that you mentioned. I think I leaned over to my friend and said pretty close to what you said. That was really embarrassing, even for a movie as atrocious to this.

Hear, hear, on both counts. I might only add that I did like Baranski's number on the beach, and thought the winner in Tropic Thunder's carnival contest of unfunniness was a coarse and desperate Jack Black. You could complete a three-course meal of D-grade entertainments if you went anywhere near Righteous Kill, in some ways an even lazier waste of talent than these.

What's extra hilarious is that you end on the plot-defeating ludicrous that I never even noticed. Perhaps the movie killed my brain cells from the moment it began screening (since said moment is at the very beginning)?

is it wrong that I thought the unarguable coarseness of Tropic Thunder was occassionally the second funniest part of it? (I'm sorry but I thought RDJ was a hoot) That's what they were going for after all.

dumb and dumber sure and not something i'd want to see twice (in either movie's case) but the time passed and i needed to be in the movie theater (in both cases) so perhaps I am too generous...

Nick, you have absolutely outdone yourself with this line: "...Seyfried [plays] all of her scenes through a terrifying knot of squealy enervation, as though she's trying to sprout a second mouth right between her eyes, to help her scream out the jellied proto-thoughts pupating in her mind."

Such an evocative description of something so abstract that I thought it was impossible to articulate.

@DJH: Well, with the caveat that I don't hate Meryl Streep in this movie, I did feel like the performance let itself down a few times even by its own fully confessed standards of silliness. But watching Meryl carouse around is a little like watching the ending(s) of A.I.: I sort of love it when enshrined talent suddenly exposes itself in grasping-at-straws mode. Not out of schadenfreude; I just find it interesting, and in her case sort of humanizing. So glad you liked the rest of the review.

@Tim: As you'll have guessed, I'm not getting near Righteous Kill. And as you now know, I thought Kingsley was great in Elegy.

@Nathaniel: Goatdog's got your back on Tropic Thunder (and we all agree on Downey), but don't get smug about it: he hated the Chabrol as much as I did. :)

@Bill C.: Praise indeed, coming from you! I really appreciate it. I should really edit the line to say "pupating in her character's mind," because I don't want to sound like I think Seyfried herself is mindless. She's been shrewd and smart in totally different performances (viz. Mean Girls and Nine Lives) but she looks pretty lost and helpless here. Funny what happens when you don't have a director at the helm. Anyway, thanks again for the compliment.

Reading the Bromance: Homosocial Relationships in Film and Television ($32/pbk). Ed. Michael DeAngelis. Wayne State University Press, 2014.
Academic pieces that dig into recent portraits in popular media, comic and dramatic, of intimacies between straight(ish) men. Includes the essay
"'I Love You, Hombre': Y tu mamá también as Border-Crossing Bromance" by Nick Davis, as well as chapters on Superbad, Humpday, Jackass, The Wire, and other texts. Written for a mixed audience of scholars, students, and non-campus readers. Forthcoming in June 2014. "Remarkably sophisticated essays." Janet Staiger, "Essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary models of gender and sexuality." Harry Benshoff

Fifty Key American Films ($31/pbk). Ed. Sabine Haenni, John White. Routledge, 2009. Includes my essays on
The Wild Party,
The Incredibles, and
Brokeback Mountain. Intended as both a newcomer's guide to the terrain
and a series of short, exploratory essays about such influential works as The Birth of a Nation, His Girl Friday, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song,
Taxi Driver, Blade Runner, Daughters of the Dust, and Se7en.

The Cinema of Todd Haynes: All That Heaven
Allows ($25/pbk). Ed. James Morrison. Wallflower Press, via Columbia University Press, 2007. Includes the essay
"'The Invention of a People': Velvet Goldmine and the Unburying of Queer Desire" by Nick Davis, later expanded and revised in The Desiring-Image.
More, too, on Poison, Safe, Far From Heaven, and Haynes's other films by Alexandra Juhasz, Marcia Landy,
Todd McGowan, James Morrison, Anat Pick, and other scholars. "A collection as intellectually and emotionally
generous as Haynes' films" Patricia White, Swarthmore College

Film Studies:
The Basics ($23/pbk). By Amy Villarejo. Routledge, 2006, 2013. Award-winning
film scholar and teacher Amy Villarejo finally gives us the quick, smart, reader-friendly guide to film vocabulary that every
teacher, student, and movie enthusiast has been waiting for, as well as a one-stop primer in the past, present, and future of film production, exhibition,
circulation, and theory. Great glossary, wide-ranging examples, and utterly unpretentious prose that remains rigorous in its analysis;
the book commits itself at every turn to the artistry, politics, and accessibility of cinema.

Most recent screenings in each race;
multiple nominees appear wherever they scored their most prestigious nod...
and yes, that means Actress trumps Actor!

This Blog Sponsored by...

Chicagoans! This site doesn't even accept advertising, but I'm making an unsolicited exception for the
best, freshest, most affordable meal you can enjoy in the Loop, at any time of the day, whether
you're on the go or eager to sit. Cuban and Latin American sandwiches, coffees, pastries, salads,
shakes, and other treats. Hand-picked, natural, and slow-cooked ingredients. My friendly neighborhood
place, a jewel in my life even before the Reader and Time Out figured it out. Visit!

Watch this space! Chicago has a new, exciting, important, and totally accessible cadre of queer film critics who are joining forces to
bring screenings, special events, and good, queer-focused movie chats to our fair city. Read our mission!
Stay tuned for events! Cruise the website, and help
get this great new group off the ground by enrolling as a friend (it's free!) and by asking how you can help.